History: Studio Day 1

Wow time flies. I am currently on my desktop looking through my Lightroom catalog and checkout out some of my old photographs from when I first got my “studio” equipment. My wife knew I was really into photography and being the best wife on the planet did some research and purchased my first kit from BHphotovideo.com for Christmas. Man was I excited. I opened up the packages like a 6 year old at 6am on Christmas day. My first kit was a 3 light kit, 2 light stands, 1 boom arm and 2 umbrellas. I set everything up so I could play around with my new toy.So what I received was 3 hot lights. At first I was thinking I got some strobes until I started opening everything up. It was no big deal, I was beyond grateful that I had anything to start off with. Man are those things bright and hot. I knew that already but when you actually have it next to you its a different beast than what someone says on the internet.

First pictures are of pictures of my sister. I’m not going to put those on the blog, my sister looked great but my pictures sure didn’t. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I needed some practice and more equipment. I had the lights but I had no backgrounds. So I needed something cheap. I dragged a friend of mine with me to scour some stores for some fabric that I could hang up to use as a background. I purchased a black and a white material to start off with. Bought some velcro with it to hang it up.

Now I need subjects.

Luckily there was a willing subject that I worked with at the time, Moose, and his girlfriend, Sharelle (now wife), that wanted some photographs of themselves. I learned a lot that day.

1. Ceiling height is my enemy (7 feet at that location)

2. Color temperature is my enemy and my friend

3. Posing 2 people on a 6 foot wide fabric is hilarious

4. Have fun

I have to say that I had a lot of fun shooting that day. They didn’t mind that I was learning at the same time that I was trying to create something new in my journey of photography.

Some of my photos absolutely sucked, while a couple of them came out great. They currently have the great ones printed large in their home.

Here is a photograph of Moose standing on the backdrop so you can get a sense of hilarity of what I was dealing with.